Monthly Archives: August 2011

Technology/Sports Equation

Social Media Fuels MMA

Strikeforce MMA was the second leading player in the mixed martial arts industry in early 2009 when I was retained by the co-owners, Silicon Valley Sports & Entertainment (now Sharks Sports & Entertainment) and founder Scott Coker (pictured below), to take on an interim Chief Marketing Officer role and sit on the Executive Committee that met weekly defining the direction and growth strategy of the company. Given my general, marketing and sales management experience at senior levels in industry and the sports world, this is a role that I am suited for, having also effectively served in this manner for a number of early stage technology companies at the behest of investors, VCs and/or CEOs.

Mixed martial arts is the first event-driven sport built through internet-housed media/commentary and free cable reality programming.  It is clear that Strikeforce’s dominant competitor, Ultimate Fighting Championship, knows and leverages these success elements very well, using them to fuel demand for its lucrative pay-per-view business.  UFC was an aggressive, pervasive and no-holds-barred influence in the blogosphere and all forms of social media, shaping commentator and fan opinion about the industry, the competing promoter companies and their stables of talented fighters. Their CEO, Dana White, a magnet for media attention, is one of the world’s most prominently followed Twitter practitioners.

While Strikeforce’s Scott Coker was building an enviable stable of respected and captivating men and women fighters, some of whom could stand up well to their more highly publicized UFC counterparts, Strikeforce marketing was also stoking the constructive coals of  competition on the web. I recruited a young web and MMA savvy web site designer that led to investing in a video rich and interactive web site upgrade and directed a national search for a social media-conscious PR firm that led to retaining the political PR powerhouse firm headed by Joe Trippi, whose staff taught us the ways of the social media battlefield.

Eventually, in March 2011, UFC acquired Strikeforce in a transaction that financially served all ownership parties well. Many factors made Strikeforce appealing to UFC, including the fact the price would be a good bit higher a year later. But the value of Strikeforce, in addition to providing UFC with a ready-made source of talent for its increasingly global event appetite, can be attributed to the increasingly strong and positive voice Strikeforce established among commentators and fans in social media and the blogosphere.

 

 

Market Penetration, Product Development, Technology/Sports Equation, Work in Process

Improving Athletic Performance

What happens when you combine patient product development, patented technology across multiple sports uses, national B2B sales traction with B2C follow-on extensions emerging from R&D, archived testimonials of satisfied customers, exploratory partnership talks with Fortune 500-sized companies and the high likelihood of positive cash flow by the end of 2011?

You have my client. If you have never seen the thread among basketball, golf, football and three others, my client’s product line will make it abundantly clear.

In the wings is accelerating the product development process, national expansion of its sales force and ratcheting of its universal brand awareness and reputation among consumers and in B2B channels.

 

Innovations, Market Penetration, Market Research, New Revenue, Pricing, Product Development

Premium Seat Pricing Born

 

 

Sandy Alderson (President, above)/ Andy Dolich (Executive, left) – Oakland A’s . . . The former (now General Manager of the New York Mets) and latter (most recently COO of the San Francisco 49ers) demonstrated bold business vision in the mid 1980s when they commissioned me and colleague Bob Hallam to evaluate the relationship among ticket demand, pricing and perceived value, an engagement that led to the dramatic upward rescaling of “box” and “reserved” seats, ushering in the concept of premium seating throughout Major League Baseball.

The notion of pricing tickets relative to demand, a long-standing practice of the airline industry, had spread across Major League Baseball within three years of the A’s taking action. The neighboring  San Francisco Giants were the first to follow suit. The precursor of flex or dynamic pricing , tailored to day-by-day demand, weather, day-of-week, opponent and other variables, was a courageous move.

An important part of its effective execution was the messaging to fans most directly affected by the changes and communication of the reasoning behind the changes.  Not all fans were pleased, but the appropriateness of the philosophy was born out by the sustained results and overall economic benefits. Ironically, the Giants have been at the head of the flex-pricing class.

Lessons learned here have implications far beyond the live sports and entertainment business into the realms of tiered TV/cable and web-based subscriber services.

Branding, Building2Sell, Marketing

Building Asset Value that Attracts Investment

Growth potential, disruptive technology and profit economics top the list of factors influencing an emerging company’s value.

But without perceived brand value embodied in its image/reputation/marketplace validation, customer excitement/buying traction, a multi-layered “story” that piques imagination and a prominent scent of innovation and leadership, investors will never even get to the due diligence process, let alone ask for the financial statements.

We have exerted an important impact on building high order company value that was embraced by investors, subsequently measurably enhancing the purchase price of four companies and their assets.

  • In the mid-80s, it was Arena Football, helping client inventor/founder Jim Foster refine the game’s attributes and validate or repudiate his early assumptions about how the game should be played and what would appeal to fans. The end product was a compelling case for how Arena Football could succeed and should be marketed, to whom, the plan for which helped Foster find the owner/investors and a TV network to buy into his ambitious dream. Continue reading Building Asset Value that Attracts Investment →